HIGH COURT TO HEAR ILLINOIS-U.S. WASTE CASE

The Supreme Court said Monday that it would settle a dispute between Illinois and the federal government over whether states can regulate workers at hazardous-waste sites.

In another case, the justices said they would rule on the constitutionality of the method that Congress uses to recalculate how many House members each state gets after a national census.

Because the reapportionment case could be important to the 21 states that soon will lose or gain House members because of the 1990 census, the court scheduled arguments in the case for Feb. 24. A decision is expected by July.

The Illinois dispute stems from two 1988 state laws governing the training and licensing of workers who handle machinery at disposal sites for hazardous waste.

The laws require that anyone applying for a license to remove hazardous waste must provide a certified record of at least 40 hours of training in the state, must pass a written test and must complete at least an eight-hour refresher course each year.

Equipment operators also must show they have 4,000 hours of experience with equipment used to handle hazardous waste.

The National Solid Waste Management Association, an industry trade group, sued the state, claiming that regulations of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Labor Department agency that generally sets standards for workplace safety, pre-empt the Illinois laws.

A U.S. District Court upheld the state regulations, accepting Illinois officials` argument that the restrictions were designed to protect public safety and the environment as well as to promote job safety and thus went beyond the scope of the OSHA standards.

However, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago in November 1990 ruled that the state must get federal approval before imposing job safety requirements in areas covered by OSHA, even when the state rules have a dual purpose of protecting workers and the general public.

The justices are expected to hear arguments in the case in the spring and rule by summer.

In the reapportionment case, Montana officials in October won a ruling from a three-judge district court panel declaring unconstitutional the law that Congress has used since 1941 to reapportion House seats after the census. Montana`s top officials, including its members of Congress, objected that the state will lose one of its two U.S. House members as a result of reapportionment after last year`s national census.

Under the 50-year-old formula, 12 other states-including Illinois-also will lose members while eight states gain representation.

Illinois will lose two House seats from its current total of 22.

Montana contends that the reapportionment will deny voters equal representation because they will be in a district of 803,000 people, much larger than the average-size House district, which next year will contain 570,000 people.

In a series of voting-rights rulings over the years, the Supreme Court has established the doctrine of one-person, one-vote-the principle that voting districts should be as close to equal in size as possible to guard against having voters in sparsely populated areas carry more clout than those in densely populated areas.

The Constitution requires that each state have at least one House member, but voting districts cannot cross state lines. Congress set the current size of the House-435 members-in 1911.

Montana also argues that Congress should have to review its reapportionment plan after every decennial census instead of letting one method operate automatically. For the country`s first 150 years, Congress did just that, struggling with reapportionment every decade until members adopted the current formula to end the political squabbling.

In appealing to the justices, the Bush administration argued that nothing in the Constitution ''suggests that a court may second-guess Congress`

rational choice among methods of apportionment tied to the population of the states.''

In other action Monday, the court ruled 8-0 that the federal Veterans`

Re-employment Rights Act does not limit the length of military service leave that National Guard reservists can take and still have their civilian jobs guaranteed. The ruling was a victory for William ''Sky'' King, a hospital security manager whose employer denied him a three-year leave to become an active duty command sergeant major with the Alabama National Guard.